Virgin Media is killing SmartCall, one of its most useful apps

To incentivise customers to sign up for its TV, telephone and broadband packages, Virgin Media offers a number of value-added services. These include access to Sky's mobile apps, but also things like cloud storage, web hosting and a rather useful tool that lets you use your landline minutes to dial premium numbers from your mobile. But from April 28th, some of those services will not longer be available, after the company announced that it's closing Virgin Media Cloud, Webspace and SmartCall.

After the past week, Virgin Media has begun notifying customers of the closure. In a notice on its support site, it writes: "As more of our customers are choosing to use alternative apps and services, we've decided to stop offering Virgin Media Cloud, Webspace and SmartCall from 28th April." Customers using Webspace will now be offered 12 months' free hosting with GoDaddy and Cloud users are being told to transfer their files over to Dropbox.

The biggest blow will be the loss of SmartCall. Now that mobile providers have been forced to drop charges for 0845 and other prefixes, the app's domestic use has become limited. However, it is a very useful tool for people roaming abroad: users can connect to a WiFi network and make calls back to the UK using their existing landline allowance. If your package includes unlimited weekend and evening calls, then holiday conversations with friends and family back home are totally free.

Despite that, Virgin Media says it has decided not to renew its contract with the company behind the technology and will begin pulling the apps from Google Play and the App Store in due course.